Common Commercial Landlord/Tenant Issues

There is an inherent tension in the commercial landlord’s relationship with its tenant –while striving to foster a successful customer rapport, the landlord and its property manager also need to ensure that the tenant fully complies with its lease obligations. When a tenant fails to do so, the landlord must react promptly and in the manner most likely to protect its own financial interests; whether that be getting the tenant “back on track” or recovering possession in order to lease the premises to a more viable, less troublesome tenant. Numerous issues factor into the analysis of how best to proceed in the face of a tenant default, including rental market conditions, the tenant’s financial status, the tenant’s prior defaults and payment history, the nature of the tenant’s default and whether it can be cured, the length of the remaining lease term and, of course, the landlord’s tolerance for litigation.

How Our Experience Helps

We have decades of experience representing office, industrial and retail landlords (and occasionally tenants), ranging from actions to recover possession (based on monetary and non-monetary defaults) to CAM charge disputes to actions for damages against tenants and their guarantors, and everything in between. Our clients include sophisticated institutional landlords (including a Fortune 100 financial services organization, a national grocery chain, a national industrial property owner, a regional property management company, and the owner of multiple regional retail centers) as well as less experienced owners of single commercial properties. We have educated ourselves about and understand the commercial leasing business and, over the years, have successfully handled all manner of defaults. Recognizing that landlord/tenant litigation is not “one size fits all”, we take pride in giving practical advice tailored both to the situation at hand and to the result our client wishes to achieve in the most efficient and painless way possible.

Representative Matters

• Obtained a defense verdict at trial (and recovered fees and costs) on behalf of a national grocery store in an eviction action by its landlord based on claimed failures to maintain our client’s store which had “gone dark” and then favorably resolved a subsequent breach of lease action filed by the landlord
• Successfully defended a commercial landlord in obtaining early dismissal of its tenant’s action for punitive damages for fraud, conversion and wrongful eviction
• Defended a national grocery chain in a multi-party lawsuit brought by its subtenant for damages resulting from a fire at the premises and favorably resolved it by way of a nuisance value settlement
• Represented a regional hospital in successfully preventing eviction in a rent and personal property dispute with its sub-landlord and the master landlord resulting from a change in ownership of rented premises
• Recovered possession of a 400,000 square foot warehouse and successfully defended against tenant’s defenses based on fraud and misrepresentation
• Successfully resolved, pre-litigation, a dispute arising from a national retail tenant’s claims against our client landlord that the lighting system in a 950,000 square foot distribution facility was defective
• Obtained summary judgment in favor of the owner of a commercial center against the patron of a tenant restaurant claiming violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related state-law statutes
• Representation of numerous commercial landlords in disputes and actions arising out of tenant defaults, including to recover possession, for damages for breach of lease and guaranty, breach of non-monetary covenants, and the disposition of abandoned personal property

If you would like to discuss how our experience can assist you with your specific business dispute or legal issue, please contact us for a free telephone consultation.